In certain vehicles, such as motorcycles, all terrain vehicles and personal water craft, a fuel valve is provided which has both an "on" and a "reserve" position to control the transfer of fuel from the fuel tank to the engine. In the on position the top 80 to 90% of the fuel tank volume is available to be drawn to the engine and when the fuel tank is below that level no more fuel is delivered to the engine and the engine stalls out. The operator then has to switch the fuel valve to the reserve position wherein the fuel adjacent the bottom of the tank is made available to the engine. Forcing the operator to manually adjust the fuel valve from the on position to the reserve position, alerts the operator that the vehicle is low on fuel so that the operator can return the vehicle to be refueled. This is desirable, for example, in a personal water craft application to protect operators of those vehicles from completely running out of fuel when they are a long distance from the shore.
Current systems utilize two drop tubes of different lengths extended through the top wall of the fuel tank, or two stand tubes of different lengths extended through the bottom wall of the fuel tank, and communicating at different levels within the fuel tank. When the fuel valve is in the on position, fuel is drawn through the shorter of the two tubes when received through the top wall of the fuel tank and when fuel is absent from the open end of that tube, the vehicle stalls out. However, due to fuel sloshing within the fuel tank during normal operation of the vehicle such as turning, accelerating, stopping or when operating over rough terrain or rough water, a significant amount of air may be passed through the tube and drawn into the engine. Especially in a two stroke engine, extended periods of operation with air ingestion will cause engine damage and even engine failure. Thus, there is a need to limit the air ingestion while still providing the multi-level fuel pickup with a fuel valve manually operable between on and reserve positions.